THE PRINCE OF BOOKS

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ABSTRACT: LIFE AND LETTERS about Italian publisher and novelist Roberto Calasso. His third novel, “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,O has just been published by Knopf. He is editorial director of Adelphi Edizioni, of Milan, a 31-year-old house known for its list of classic and obscure texts from all cultures and periods. Interviews Calasso and his wife, novelist Fleur Jaeggy, in Milan. With Umberto Eco, he is considered one of the leading intellectuals in Italy today. Tells about his privileged and bookish childhood in Florence and Rome. His first novel, “L'Impuro Folle,O was about Freud's paranoid patient Daniel Paul Schreber. His second, “La Rovina di Kasch,O is based on an African legend. Those works are known for their complex cultural allusions. Like Eco, he collects works by the 17th-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. Adelphi was founded by Roberto Bazlen and Luciano Foa to publish an Italian edition of Nietzsche. It is known for having achieved financial success without any compromise of intellectual standards. Nearly all of its cover blurbs are anonymously written by Calasso; the blurb has become one of his favorite forms.